NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, are made to protect secrets, establishing confidentiality between two parties. Since both participants agree to protect the information therein, so long as the NDA exists, one would have to assume what they're protecting would lead to some juicy gossip.
Fortunately, NDAs expire, leading to the tea overflowing for us all to sip.
Reddit user, u/SkullLikesCreepiness, wanted the tea spilled everywhere when they asked:
People with expired non-disclosure-agreements, what's the juicy info you can now tell us?
Swing And A Miss
As an investor I was pitched a 10% stake in a company that owned the trademark "iWatch" and their whole value weighed on Apple buying the rights from them. I declined. About a year later Apple revealed the "Apple Watch" and I sighed with relief
When The TV Spills The Tea
My mom had an NDA while sitting on a Grand Jury for over a year. I prodded her all the time on the case and what she was doing for over a year of her life. She refused to tell me, only saying that, "you have to be very careful about what's said on the phone, you never know who's listening. But you'll know what I was doing when the story breaks."
Ok... so a few months later I walk into work and see on the TV that our governor was indicted for corruption, including selling Obama's vacant Senate seat when he became Pres in '08. Rod Blagojevich then paraded all over tv including on "The Apprentice" to tout his innocence and beg ppl to listen to the tapes that "exonerated" him. Yeah, ok dude. I have different information.
Don't Breathe
Many government buildings had lead paint on them well into the 90s. My dad was hired to repaint buildings for a number of government agencies including the DOD and FBI
Not As Sexy As You Think
Well, this isn't exactly about me signing an NDA, rather me inadvertently causing a bunch of people to have to sign an NDA. I used to frequent the Playboy Mansion as a regular weekend movie-night guest. Trust me, it was nothing scandalous and very chill. I wrote a pretty innocent book about my experiences moving to Los Angeles including my Playboy Mansion frequents. I was put on a Do Not Admit list for writing about it, and all the girls who were coming up or who could come up after for movie night and Sunday pool parties had to sign NDAs going forward.
Perfectly Lined Up To Ruin Lives
Carly Fiorina, then CEO of HP, asked us to not announce huge layoffs before US elections in order to help George Bush. I couldn't believe it especially as the comms team I was on wasn't even in the US. I never gelt okay about that one.
"Fresh"
I worked as a head cheaf in a pretty well known food chain in Spain. Everything was frozen except for the sautéd zucchini that went into the fried rice. Even the ribs were frozen cooked and then thawed in the microwave and bathed in boiling sauce. Food was decently tasting though, just frozen and kind of nasty. It was my first HC job and didn't last long.
So Much Personal Info Out There In The Open
Call centers are a sh-t show.
I worked for Comcast support in 2008 and everyone was required to write everything down in spiral notebooks - imagine 200 college aged kids with zero understanding of security walking around with multiple notebooks filled with names, credit card numbers, addresses, etc - everything that was said went into the notebook... why be so wildly careless? So that we don't have to ask the customer again if the program crashed and we had to enter the info again lol. Also people took the notebooks home regularly. They were our own personal notebooks and we were required to do this.
Who Owns America?
Only NDA I signed was to prevent me from disclosing that King Abdula(since deceased) of Saudi Arabia uses his university trust to purchase large swaths of land in the USA very quietly.
This particular purchase was a handful of years right after 9/11 and is very close to Washington DC.
I believe they are still the primary investors. They were also incredibly demanding during their due diligence but are great partners, but I don't think that firm has used any more middle eastern money because they have some great other capital partners.
Never As Fun As You'd Want It To Be
Late to the party, but here's the only NDA thing I've ever been a part of.
I was in the closed Alpha for a new Command and Conquer game EA was supposed to release a few years back. It was fun, but as you can tell it never came to fruition.
Here's some screen grabs from when I played. Nothing, exciting, but they were basically turning C&C into a SAAS-offering. I'm honestly glad it failed because buying generals and not having an actual new C&C game just sounds terrible, not to mention the lack of single-player at the time.
You Can Only Imagine What's Behind Military Doors
You sign an NDA when you finish your time in the military. It does not expire for classified material, but I can discuss things they have already released to the public. I got to witness the Navy's laser weapon technology long before the public knew of its existence... it blew my mind when I saw it in action. They are on the new Ford class carriers and can knock out a missile or aircraft at the press of a button. When they released this to the public, I remember seeing comments like "you can only imagine the tech they are working on today" made me laugh at how true that statement is... Should have a look at military rail gun technology too.
Also seeing the strict usage of fiber optic networking throughout the ship was cool, at that time I had never heard of it. Even today it is still not common place to every home, but is well known now.
More Military Secrets
I had to sign an NDA years ago (and get an FBI background check) to do a gig for Northrup Grumman. I do lights and video and they needed someone to do lighting for their annual international VIP meeting. They were very excited to reveal their new tank busting missile that could be fired from an Apache helicopter. They had a slide show with all these fancy graphics about it, along with full color printed brochures that they handed out to everyone who attended. At the end of the event, all the brochures (large booklets, not leaflets) were left all over the hotel when people didn't want to carry them around anymore. How's that for security?
On another note, the keynote speaker who was the big cheese at NG kept using Star Trek metaphors during his speech. While stressing the need for secrecy he kept referring to "those spying Romulans." So weird.
So, You Knew All Along That Tony Was Going To Take Away The Suit?
I worked with Pinewood Studios on the engineering for the effects of the ferry in Spider-Man Homecoming to split in half and I wasn't allowed to spoil that.
The Case Has Been Cracked!
Outback Steakhouse's recipe for Macaroni and Cheese:
- 4 oz of Heavy Whipping Cream
- 4 oz of Velvetta cheese
- 9 oz of Al dente penne pasta
Throw it in a saute pan and melt the cheese.
BAM! Outback Mac and Cheese :)
Edit: just for clarification, this is the old recipe. I left the company in 2003. The newer recipe has cavatappi pasta and spices and crispy topping.
Really, Oklahoma? Really?
The State of Oklahoma once busted a counterfeit check ring because the individuals misspelled Oklahoma on the front of some checks. They were damn near perfect copies with valid account, check and amount numbers and were caught when an employee who ran a reader/sorter machine noticed a rejected check with the spelling Oaklahoma. I was that employee and had to testify in court regarding finding the checks. I think I'm still not supposed to talk about certain details, even though it was a long time ago.
Shows How Expendable You Are
I served on a board that had kidnap ransom insurance for all the board members. A condition of the insurance was that we could tell no one that we had kidnap ransom insurance.
Nothing To Be Done
At variform, its a factory that makes auto parts for Chrysler/jeep. They allow there employees to breath in toxic welding fumes and only when the government came around for testing did they add more air flow, then took them away after. Never gave the proper ppe for the work , always had ripped gloves and working with razor sharp steel pieces. The temps outnumbered the full timers 4 to 1 , the temp agency does t even hire people who speak English, he literally just hold up money and says "WANT?". Its a mega sh-tshow there.
Edit: lots of people are asking me to report it , I can assure you it's already been done. Friends I still have there are saying air quality tests are being routinely done , but usually with the bay doors open for a few hours and fans from non welding lines to help airflow(then returned to there rightfull line). I appreciate the concern and advise from everyone. Thanks again and good luck to everyone that's in this situation.
What We Missed Out On...
That they were coming out with a microsoft watch to rival the Apple Watch , this was 4 years ago if not longer , you can bet it flopped !
Introducing the Microsoft Zune Watch.
Our World Is Shattered
I was once on the camera crew of Pimp My Ride and most of the show is fake. The guys knew ahead of time that we were arriving, the car had to be fully paid off, and most of the work done has to be paid for in almost full.
Anything To Keep You Buying New Stuff
It's not much, but I was part of developing Air Drop for Mac OS X Lion (10.7) and was doing this on a 2008 Mac Pro. In the end, we were told it's not to be made compatible with 2008's and require a 2009. That made no sense because I was successfully testing it on the 2008 just fine. It was a planned obsolescence, a ploy to force users to buy a new Mac. Upset, I secretly released a patch on Media Fire for owners of a 2008 to get Air Drop. It didn't require much as I made the lockout as cheaply as possible.
I also did development of USB 3.0 support and also did this on my 2008 Mac Pro (I should mention that this Mac Pro is a prototype with a unique firmware that has an Insyde BIOS setup with all options available for debugging, of which Apple never asked back, and I still have today in my office as my daily driver. It has no serial number and refers to itself as a prototype in any software trying to get a board revision; it also doesn't run retail Mac OS, hence I said BIOS earlier. It doesn't have EFI, so it runs Windows 10 today with a GTX-1050 Ti installed, and still has the USB 3.0 card I had during development.) (Before anyone asks, no I didn't steal it, I asked my supervisor if they wanted it back, and he told me to keep it, they had no use for it).
